COMPULSORY TRAVELLING.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume X, Issue 1187, 28 October 1882, Page 2

COMPULSORY TRAVELLING.

(From an East Cape Correspondent.) About the middle of September, I, living in the wilds of Waiapu—a district ungoverned and untaxed -received, with profound veneration (an affection which my friends know 1 am subject to) a polite and peremptory invitation from “ Victoria by the Grace of God ” and so forth, to assist Hur Majesty in the administration of criminal jurisprudence at the beautiful city of Auckland, the Athens and Corinth of New Zealand. Dear Sergeant Bullen told me, with vice-regal politeness, that the royal document explained itself, but that he would especially direct my attention to the closing clause, which intimated that the alternative of non-acceptance of the royal invitation was closely conjoined with a hue of one hundred sterling pounds. Thu weather being fine I made a vir e of necessity (as obeyers of oongfis (Celh' ”0 fain to do), and mounted a staunch though ancient nag, fresh brought in from winter pasture. Two days’ southerly ride along the Pacific slopes of the untamed ocean, to the east of County Cook, brought me to the county town, from which it was my intention to take ship for the northern capital. Meeting, however, with two congenial and well-mounted burghers, the trio of us determined to go northward overland. It was the third time that we had traversed the Motu or Kowai track, called in survey lingo the Orniond-Opotiki Road (this word “ road ” alludes to the future), and the three weeks of high winds and no rain had rendered it tolerably passable. We left Gisborne at four o’clock, and arrived at the outskirt homestead in the Poverty Bay district at nine at night, the waxing moon affording us a warrant for post-sunset travel. Although 28 miles from the port, the surroundings and internal arrangements were extremely comfortable, ami seemed quite luxurious to our hardy party, who were all bent on roughing it—a virtue we were not permitted by the genius of the place to bring into play for this night at least. Next morning we found that late at night travel, followed by cosy comfort, were not promotive of an early start. The seductive attraction of the breakfast table, and the knowledge that this was to be our last square meal for a few days, detained us, and it was nine o’clock before we were in the saddle. Our horses, too, had had their last square feed for several days, and, besides, it was they that would have to do the hard work of the journey. They call it fourteen miles more of open country, and then we get into a wide belt of forest, our track through which extends for a distance of fifty or sixty miles. We, of course, did not make our way through the bush in one day, but slept out, a la belle etoi'ey with only u few sheets of bark to keep off the dew—for fortunately there was no rain. The moon and stars quite turned night into day, and enabled us to prolong our journey for several hours after sunset. This, of course, is trying for the horses, but there is really no good camping ground all the way, and our only method of preventing our nags from knocking up altogether—a very dreadful contingency by the way—was to stop for half an hour at a time when we came to a good bite of anything they would eat—scrub or coarse wild grass—and let them have a meagre approach to a bellyful. At sunset we crossed the bridge over the Motu River. This is the only work of any pretensions to art or scientific structure on the line from sea to sea, being a framed bridge of some seventy feet in one arch across or rather just below a boiling cataract, the winding up of a succession of rapids. Here the Motu is confined by rocks to a very narrow course, and the bridge is high above the torrents. Though fatigued, and also in some haute to reach a decent camping ground—which one of us wot of -we could not refrain from pausing to admire the picturesque scene. Environed by giant forest trees —totara,riinu, kahlkatea, tawa, miro, rata, and many others, this solitary work of man bears testimony to the necessities of the irrepressible Saxon. Some fifty feet perpendicularly below our feet, the river, much reduced by drought, threaded its way. AU around and overhead, the numerous feathered inhabitants were piping their evensongs, and many a new note of melody struck upon our astonished and enraptured ears. Will this seat of water priviledge ever be utilised for mining or factory purposes, was a question that arose spontaneous in our minds. The The land around truly is fertile enough, but then the modes of c--: miunication and the distance from a market admit of but

one reply ami that a >/e. After a fur thcr ride of about tc» .files through a freshly cleared winding path, on the moony or eastern side of a hill range, we came to the bark sheets in position, and settled ourselves for the night s repose. The night was clear, ami at this altitude (about mm thou-